Revealing Bigfoot with Blackmagic Design: An Exclusive with Director Brett Eichenberger and DP Michael Ferry
Director Brett Eichenberger and DP Michael Ferry used Blackmagic Design to bring to life their latest film, “A Flash of Beauty: Bigfoot Revealed.” It was shot with a combination of Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and URSA Mini Pro 4.6K cameras in Blackmagic RAW, and then edited and graded using DaVinci Resolve.
Can you share a little about your background and how you got into this world of production?
Brett Eichenberger: I’ve been a filmmaker since I was a 12 year old. As a child of the 80’s I’ve always been interested in sci-fi and the paranormal. I’ve done a few narrative features, including a drama and a comedy but I’ve always wanted to do a paranormal documentary. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest and having connections to the world of Bigfoot, I saw an opportunity to bring a cinematic mindset to tell the story of this mysterious cryptid.
How did you become involved with A Flash of Beauty: Bigfoot Revealed?
Brett Eichenberger: Years ago, my wife Jill and I were invited to a secret meeting of Bigfoot researchers and experiencers. We were so enamored with their stories and realized that these witnesses had also experienced a kind of trauma associated with the events. That left an impression on us and when the industry shut down due to the pandemic we thought it would be the perfect time to do this documentary on our own, we felt the genre needed a seriousness to the subject that seemed to be missing.
When you're looking for your next project, what factors and influences determine which ones you say yes to?
Brett Eichenberger: Any project I’m going to be a part of needs to have something impactful to say. I feel a need to entertain and educate at the same time. Movies and TV can be such a powerful force in the world and here’s an opportunity to make the world a better place one audience member at a time.
As a director, what does your pre-production process look like on a project like this?
Brett Eichenberger: Our approach to this documentary was a bit different than traditional documentaries. Since we had been nurturing this idea for years we had a really good idea of where we needed and wanted to go from the beginning. We put together an outline and identified how we could fill in the needs. Once we had our outline we started with a series of interview questions that would get us responses we hadn’t really seen in documentaries of this type. We really wanted to know more about the emotional toll witnessing something that “doesn’t exist” has on an individual. We knew it’s not just how a person reacts the moment or the day of a sighting, but how do they react in the weeks, months and years after? As it turns out, they’re no longer the person they used to be. A Bigfoot sighting changes EVERYTHING in these people’s lives and we felt that was an important point in showing that these creatures really do exist.
